For
some
time
now,
owners
of
vehicles
with
tinted
glass in
Nigeria
have
been
going
through
a rough
time
with
policemen
who see
the situation as one from where they can make up for
the personal and institutional revenue losses that
have been plaguing them ever since the removal of
roadblocks from the nation’s highways.
Without going into the legal and policy arguments on
the issue, it is obvious that some vehicles (outside the
statutorily designated exceptions) are actually so
opaquely tinted that any rational person seeing them
would naturally think that the occupants are into
something sinister. They are so darkly tinted that
someone outside, no matter how close, cannot see
whoever is inside. Any scrupulous law enforcement-
minded person would naturally suspect that there is
something fishy about such unusual vehicles.
On the other hand, most vehicles, especially vans
and SUVs that are manufactured in North America,
Europe and Japan come with tinted glass with the
thickness graduated from the front to the rear. In all
these vehicles, it is never a problem for anyone
standing close to see or identify the occupants. In
fact, the front passengers’ windows are generally and
rightly of a lighter tint.
The reason why these cars are tinted range from the
need to enhance the performance of the air-
conditioning system, protection from harmful glare
and the general room-type comfort of modern
automobiles. They don’t have criminals and other
deviants in mind and as a matter of fact, none of
these factory tints will meet the demands of anyone
trying to avoid visibility as they are reasonably
transparent.
Unfortunately, in Nigeria we have developed a
national worldview that seeks to avoid rational
responses to emerging challenges by resorting to
extreme and bizarre solutions that are, in most cases,
counterproductive or are indicative of palpable
intellectual laziness. Nowhere is this mentality more
prevalent than in the areas of crime prevention and
law enforcement. That is why it is often possible for
the police to block road traffic with lines of vehicles
stretching into kilometres just because they are
“searching for criminals”. Common sense should have
made it clear that only a foolish and suicidal criminal
will wait patiently in a roadblock queue to be
apprehended.
Little wonder therefore that no wanted person has
ever been caught at such foolish and annoying
checkpoints. The only possible thing happening at
such places is the opportunity of the officers manning
them to collect illicit tolls and unlawfully enrich
themselves at the expense of security.
Specifically about tinted glass ban in Nigeria, the only
reason that the authorities thought it necessary is
their belief that criminals also use them to shade
themselves from detection. It ought to be the rational
expectation that any vehicle that is tinted has
unwittingly invited the scrupulous law enforcement
officer upon itself as that would be easily profiled to
be something questionable. Unfortunately, that will
be the car they would approach obsequiously and be
asking “Oga, anything for your boys?” Their only
alternative is to lump all those with tinted glass
together as criminals who must then cough up
something if they are to continue on their journeys.
Recently, the Senate sensing the abuses and unfair
harassment that have followed the recent IG’s
directive on tinted glass has initiated a legislative
process intended on repealing or nullifying the Motor
Vehicles (Prohibition of Tinted Glass) Act, Cap M21
Laws of the Federation (Formerly Decree 6 of 1991). A
proper reading of section 1(1) of the act shows that
the Police have been wilfully misinterpreting it to
harass innocent road users who have the misfortune
of driving vehicles with any form of tint. What the law
actually prescribes is that “no person shall cause any
glass fitted to a vehicle to be tinted, shaded, coloured
lightly or thickly or treated in any way as to render
obscure or invisible persons or objects inside the car.”
The critical issue here is not whether the tint was
factory-fitted or not, it is whether it obscures or
makes occupants invisible. Simple! The police know
they cannot sustain their nebulous argument based
on this Act before a court of law. So it is just a source
of illegitimate revenue and power show.
As long as the tint on a vehicle does not render
“obscure” or “invisible” whatever is inside it, there can
never be a sustainable charge on it. It is not the
expectation of the law that any subjective
interpretation by a police officer who probably needs
an eye test for his poor vision to be the conclusion as
to what is obscured or ordinarily invisible. Of course,
there are some wilfully tinted vehicles that do not
allow for either vision or identification of occupants.
These are the targets of that law and certainly not
those factory-fitted ones that were tested for
transparency in the general interests of traffic safety
for the occupants and every other person concerned
where they were made. It is inconceivable that a
vehicle would pass the rigorous inspection of safety
personnel in the manufacturing countries if the glass,
as tinted, would lead to the inability to see those
inside or for those inside not to see what is
happening outside.
If the Police could just do what is right instead of the
present situation of wholesale embarrassment and
harassment of innocent road users, there should be
no need to nullify the present statute. Perhaps the
dictatorial origins of the Decree that metamorphosed
into the present law are beclouding the logical and
inevitable juristic perception that the demands of the
rule of law under a supreme constitution have
brought into being: the days of subjective
interpretation of military decrees are far gone. All
Nigerian laws, to be valid, must now meet the
standards of objectivity, reasonableness and
constitutionality. The present abusive, indiscriminate
and oppressive application of the tinted cars laws by
the police cannot stand the muster of judicial review
and that of common sense.
It is the subsisting injustice that the current initiative
before the senate on tinted glass seeks to stop.
Otherwise, it is a law that was necessitated by the
reality in the country but which the enforcers have
discredited irretrievably. It is not a crime for a vehicle
to have a tinted glass that does not obscure visibility
either from outside or from inside it.

SOURCE: http://www.punchng.com/columnists/trivia-constitutional/polices-misconception-about-tinted-glass/
MOD please oblige front page presence for benefit of NLanders who at one time or the other have been fleeced by these rascals,thanks

Hmmmm, how do u explain to a policeman that the occupants in your tinted vehicle can be seen

You will need nothing less than 10 SANs to prove that ur tinted glass is not invisible.

That law needs to be expunged from our constitution Asap
I don't blame the police,d law of tinted glass is a confusion in its self.

In the US the laws regarding tint vary and that variation has a lot to do with security and crime prevention.Like the person above said...visibility is subjective so the laws governing the legal darkness of the tint has a measurement...I guess it's in SANs? In New York the law requires front windows and windshield to be clear and rear windshield to be within the tint limit.In reality the police would turn a blind eye to light tint in the front windows but they will pull you over for darkened tint...security and crime prevention. I am sure that pulling over tinted vehicles has slowed the increase of crime.